Blessed be the Ties that Bind
by the ersatz diplomat
Summary: Family is the only refuge from war--The Weasley family's journey through the Second War with Voldemort. Written for the LJ community Fandom Fusion's Ides of March Challenge. Rated for torture and character death.


**Title**: Blessed Be the Ties that Bind  
**Genre**: General, Humor, Angst  
**Characters**: The Weasley Family  
**Ratings & Warnings**: PG for language, mischief, torture and death.  
**Word Count:** 4,964  
**Summary**: Family is the only refuge from war.  
**Author's Note:** Written for the LJ community Fandom Fusion's Ides of March Challenge  
**Prompts:** "Empire" and  
_I won't give up that ghost  
It's sick the way these tongues are twisted  
The good in us is all we know  
There's too much left to taste that's bitter  
_'E-Pro', Beck

* * *

She smirked beneath the scarf that covered her nose and mouth, and pushed a stray, twisted strand of hair behind her ear. The girl took a silent step backwards, admiring her handiwork. It had been a few years since she had written in red on the ancient stone walls of the school—this time she would remember it. This time it was hers, unmistakably.

The paint dripped a bit, staining her hands like watery blood. It would wash easily from her skin, but it etched onto the stone, bubbling and hissing. Her weapon of choice was Muggle spray paint, charmed to be semi-permanent by an ex-professor-werewolf-fugitive with a pregnant wife who happened to be the niece of the woman who had tortured to insanity the parents of the young man standing lookout as Ginny vandalized the school.

Her laugh was quiet and dark—she had always had a fairly twisted sense of humor, and an appreciation for coincidence…or irony, whichever it happened to be.

One would have to be slightly disturbed, growing up with the people she grew up with. It was a form of adaptation, and a coping mechanism.

"I take it you've done this kind of thing before," Neville muttered, grinning grimly as she crept back to stand next to him.

"Sort of."

"Nice work, Weasley."

"Thanks, Nev. Couldn't have done it without you."

She smiled again as the first rays of sunrise lit the Transfiguration corridor. McGonagall would appreciate the mural.

The paint gleamed wetly on the stone, outlining a scene done in a simplistic, medieval style that might have been born of the magic in the castle itself. A lion, a raven and a badger stood guard on one side of a king and queen with ginger hair and gilt crowns--they had ended up resembling her mother and father more than she had intended.

The royal pair treaded upon on a pale snake with cold, dead eyes--the sword of Gryffindor driven through its body and into the ground. Every few moments the serpent gave a sickening twitch; the throes of a painful death in a pool of blood. A wolf, a dog and a stag looked on in eager anticipation from the other side.

_Weasley is Our King!_ she scrawled across the bottom of the painting, as an afterthought.

Nine hours later Amycus Carrow dragged Ginny, by a fistful of her long, fire-red mane, to the dais on the far end of the Great Hall, where Snape and the rest of the teachers were dining. McGonagall shot her a fleeting look of apology--her hands were tied.

Struggling away from him, Ginny climbed to her feet and spat in his face.

The Gryffindor table broke into riotous cheers.

Her scream, and then her silence pierced through the murmurs and whispers of the students as the Death Eater shoved her roughly to the floor, casting the Cruciatus as if it were the only word he had ever learned. It almost broke her, but she kept her mouth shut--every ounce of pain would be compensated by the look on the so-called Headmaster's face when he saw what she had scrawled in German over the door to Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Her brothers would be so proud, she thought, looking up at the clouds streaking across Enchanted Ceiling as she lay on the floor, and she laughed, brushing flames of hair from her eyes.

---

Ropes bound him—he tried to escape, tried running towards the disembodied voices of his friends, but the hold on his arm grew ever tighter until the edges of his vision started to darken and the flashes of light became someone else's vision—nightmarish scenes spinning out like reels of film until it wrapped him, choked him, and he woke in a cold sweat.

_Thoughts can leave deeper scarring than almost anything…_

Like he had every night since they had escaped from the Death Eaters on Tottenham Court Road, Ron bolted from the floor, halfway to his feet before he realized he had been dreaming. He dropped back onto his blankets and pushed his hair from his forehead with the back of his wrist, feeling the slick white ropes of scar tissue that had once been pale, freckled skin. It was a talisman, a reminder of why, and oddly enough; it was on the same arm as the Dark Mark would be. The idea made him feel vaguely ill.

Hermione snored quietly, inches away—the noise was oddly comforting. He could see the crisscross mark from a Death Eater's curse on her shoulders, bared by the slipping strap of her camisole. He wondered how badly it had hurt her, and if the pain he felt at seeing it compared.

Steady breathing on his other side meant Harry had finally made it downstairs. His glasses had slid down his nose and were mashed into his cheek. Ron had hooked a finger around the frames and gently pulled them from his friend's face. The lightning bolt scar on his Harry's forehead was another reminder of the war, another little neon sign that kept him from sleeping at night.

To think that he had once envied that scar made his stomach churn with guilt.

Ron was surrounded by whispering reminders of war—and not just in scars and battle wounds. It had been the tremble of his mother's hands as she made dinner, the steel in his sister's gaze as she stared out the window. It was in the dark circles beneath his father's eyes, the hesitation in Bill's voice and Charlie's set jaw. The Gryffindor in him would never let him admit that he was frightened. Afraid of dying, yes, but terrified beyond even nightmares that he would lose them. Both of them, all of them, it wouldn't matter.

He was losing Harry already—the poor sod was set on deciphering the jumbled mess Dumbledore had bequeathed them. Hermione, at least, would pull herself out of a book long enough to let him know what was going on. Solving puzzles was hardly Ron's strong suit—he preferred to strategize, attack, and then win.

But what was winning, after all? There was not a clear winner in war, like in Quidditch or chess. The First War had been won and he knew the victors personally, though the term hardly seemed to apply. "Survivors" was a more apt title—they had been missing more than body parts, their scars went deeper than skin, and their trophies of war were self-blame and distrust.

Even as loosely as he dared interpret it, their victory was no victory.

The sick feeling in his stomach turned from nausea, to despair, to anger at the inevitable. The end was barreling toward them like a freight train and there was nothing he could do—and even if they won, even if just by the slightest margin, what would the price be? The Weasleys made up the vast majority of the Order of the Phoenix—the odds were greater now that if one was lost, it would be someone with freckles and ginger hair.

He would've taken their place, given the option to die in his family's stead, but Ron wasn't sure he would last that long.

---

The tiny sitting room in the flat above Weasley's Wizard Wheezes was as full of people as it could be—a handful of Fred and George's fellow Gryffindors were in attendance, and a few of the Order members they had invited. They'd had a new idea as they had stocked shelves the day before—the Weird Sisters had been blaring on the wireless, and both brothers had been hit with the concept almost simultaneously. It could be done, it needed to be done, and they were likely the only people in Wizarding Britain with the stones to suggest it.

"Hello, gentlemen—"

"And lady—" George said, winking at Angelina, who sat at the table with a butterbeer, across from Lee Jordan. She winked back.

The twins faced the room with the experience of businessmen and the charm of conmen, making their spiel like they had practiced—a professional yet lighthearted attitude was the key to any sale.

"We have a proposition to make—"

"And Mum would absolutely kill us if she knew—"

"She really would," their father added, looking up from digging through a box of transistors. Arthur had wholeheartedly supported the idea since the twins had told him the day before—it was a good step in the right direction, though not all of the Order approved of Arthur's Muggle technology experiments. The support of others would be necessary to make the idea viable.

"But we've been planning a takeover of the empty frequencies on WWN, to stage our own news broadcast."

The room fell silent and both young men imagined the sound of crickets in their head. George looked over at Fred, smirking. They counted silently counted down from ten.

Nine, eight, seven.

Kingsley Shacklebolt raised an eyebrow, the light above reflecting in circles on his scalp.

We should really invent something for that, Fred thought.

Six, five, four, three.

The second eyebrow joined the first and he tilted his chin up so that his earring now caught the light.

George absently rubbed where his own ear had once been.

Two, one.

"That's mad," Lupin finally said from the other side of the room, shaking his head. He stared at the floor for a moment, clearly contemplating the idea, then looked up at them. "But just mad enough to work."

Of all of the Order members, they knew the professor would be the first to take their side.  
Harebrained schemes seemed to be his specialty.

"Of course it'll work," Lee added, tinkering with a bundle of wires at the table. "We've planned it out completely."

"Completely," Fred and George said together. The boys decided it was time to push the idea. Fred straightened his collar—their usual signal to lay on the impassioned persuasion.

"But, you see, we need people that want to volunteer—"

"And whatever they want to volunteer—information, time, locations, their voices."

"With Mad-Eye gone, we've got nobody to keep us on the up and up—with constant vigilance and all that."

"And I don't know about you, but we're tired of being fed propaganda, and we're going to change it."

George cleared his throat. "It's dangerous, sure, but we think it'll be worth it. To improve morale."

"You can't win a war if you don't want to."

Their friends and comrades nodded enthusiastically, but it was their father who caught the twins' eyes, sitting in his chair, looking as proud as he had ever been of them. Arthur nodded along with everyone else, but they could tell that smile on his face was more than the eagerness to change the world around them.

"So you all agree—this is a good idea, something you would be willing to support?"

A chorus of 'ayes' sounded in the small room.

"Are you…sure you want to get into this?" Kingsley asked, seriously. "If you're caught, you're dead for sure."

Both boys laughed heartily, and Fred wiped imaginary tears of mirth from his eyes.

"Mr Shacklebolt, I have some news for you…Weasleys don't get _caught._"

"Hence the name," George added, as an afterthought.

---

He sat in his empty flat with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Mum would've killed him if she had seen the state of him, rumpled and sleepless with his glasses askew, half-drunk.

His brothers would've probably applauded.

Newspapers littered the floor—he hadn't tidied up for almost a month. A stack of dirty dishes sat in the sink, porridge crusted to the spoons. Letters from his mother were locked in the desk drawer. She still took it upon herself to send one every few weeks. He never wrote back.  
Afraid though he was of the people he worked for, he knew that he would've never let anyone else see her notes.

_Your brother's wedding was…interrupted by some of your co-workers. It was beautiful, though, while it lasted._

Your sister was punished for vandalism—her second week back at school and she's already in trouble, can you believe it? I worry about her, without you there to keep an eye on her for me.

The twins are doing well with their business, though they get inspected weekly, which is a bother.

We miss you very much, Percy.

He almost couldn't take it anymore. Sometimes the letters were blotched with tears. They were risking their lives--it wasn't safe to be behaving in such a way, he thought, not during times like these. Percy had never believed in gambling and had certainly never taken a risk. It was rather shameful. He could have brought down their empire from the inside out—the Ministry, before it fell into the hands of You-Know-Who. He knew secrets that the Order of the Phoenix could have used, could have told them things that might have saved lives…

Too little, too late.

He hadn't returned to work since the huge fiasco during Mary Cattermole's trial. That had been weeks ago, he supposed he had used most of his vacation time, but he couldn't bring himself to go back.

Being torn between going back to work and going home to his family, and being unable to do either left Percy sitting alone in his flat, getting drunk and waxing philosophical.

He had enough of the family's inherent pride to keep him too arrogant to apologize to them, but not enough of their spirit of righteous indignation to keep him from joining their band of kamikazes. Fighting against You-Know-Who was suicide, but they seemed more than willing to die for their cause…whereas Percy would never have dared to die for anyone's cause.

Facing the fact that he was a coward was almost as bad as was going home at Christmas last year and facing his family. They had never truly abandoned him, and they never would, and he was sure they would fling as many spoonfuls of mashed turnips as was needed to make him realize that he was still part of the family.

The Weasleys never threw food at strangers; it was an honor reserved for those they knew best.

Percy knew he didn't deserve to be a Gryffindor, and he most certainly didn't deserve the right to call himself a Weasley. It had taken him too long to realize that the name was a privilege, not a hindrance.

---

Charlie was terrified of needles. He supposed it was the reason he liked tattoos so much.

It seemed stupid for someone who worked with huge, dangerous animals for a living to be scared of something so non-lethal. Tattoos didn't hurt much, not compared with being burned—it was the idea of being poked with a needle that bothered him. Needles were small and sharp, like daggers.

"Ow nice to see you again, Charlie. I 'ave been expecting you." The owner, a woman behind the desk welcomed him in, waving him over to a chair. "Vat are you vanting today?"

He fished a scrap of parchment out of his pocket and handed it to her, then sat down, peeling his shirt off over his head. She flattened the crumpled paper out on the table next to the chair.

"Ooh, nice. Here, you teenk?" She tapped his chest, left of his sternum and just below his collarbone.

"Sounds good to me."

Bill had gone with him to get his first—a wide band of black tribal flames around his right bicep. There was a cross of St. Florian tattooed between his shoulderblades—his own idea. A curvaceous, dark-haired girl, scantily clad in a feathered firebird costume stretched from below his left arm to his hip—Fred and George had suggested her, and named her Ilsa, after one of their customers.

They had never told him that Ilsa was an old hag with a fondness for explosives; he'd had to figure that one out on his own.

Charlie had received a letter from Ginny by owl a few weeks earlier, which she signed with a gothic-looking black ink monogram. Out of all of the Weasleys, they were the two who would spend hours doodling; her infrequent letters were often adorned with sketches. With this letter, she had included a still photograph of a "painting" she had done in the Transfiguration corridor. He was impressed, but hastily wrote back that she should take care not to push the envelope too far with Snape in charge. By the time she had received his letter, hidden in a box of cookies from home, it was too late; she had already tried to break into the Headmaster's office for some ungodly reason.

"So, zees are your girlfriend's initials, no?" The tattoo artist asked, teasingly, as she outlined the art and began filling it in with black ink. The witch reminded him of a Romanian version of Tonks, though less frightening. He doubted that this woman would chase him across the Quidditch pitch while he was half-dressed, trying to transfigure his shorts into yellow and black lacy knickers. To hear Remus tell it, she was even more terrifying while pregnant.

Charlie would take dragons any day of the week.

Nevertheless, there were some similarities—the girl wore her hair in blue and purple dreadlocks and her lower lip was pierced. Her tight-fitting black t-shirt was emblazoned with the logo of a vampire band, and she had a swirl of stars inked up the inside of her wrist, to her elbow. Her eyes were a warm brown, though, like Ginny's and his mum's.

The pang of homesickness he felt hurt considerably more than the needle, but he smiled.

"Nah, it's my little sister's initials."

"Your sister?" She inked the final stroke of the 'W,' nodding. "May I ask why you do zees?"

It took him several seconds to come up with an explanation that was sufficiently succinct.

"Because…I may never see her again. Or the rest of my family, for that matter."

A full minute went by before the tattoo artist responded. "Zat is a very good reason."

"I thought so."

She wiped the tattoo down with a potion and dried it, then turned his chair to face the mirror. "All done."

"Nice work."

Three gothic letters laced in and out of each other, in the hollow of his shoulder. It wasn't as large or detailed as his others, but it meant the most to him.

He pulled his shirt back on, and pulled twenty Galleons out of his pocket—the running rate for a simple black and white tat, plus a hefty tip.

"No," she said closing his hands around the money. "It ees free for you, Charles Veasley." The girl caught his chin and kissed his cheek.

He flushed pink to his ears and kissed her on the cheek as well--it was a local custom, after all--and turned to leave, but the girl stopped him.

"Ven you see your family next, give them my love, yes?"

He nodded, surreptitously dropping the twenty Galleons in a magazine bin near the door.

"Ven, Charlie," she added, as an afterthought. "Not eef."

"When," he repeated, smiling as he left. "Not if."

---

Shell Cottage was quiet and cozy in the midst of the late autumn storm.

Bill sat in the armchair by the fire, his feet propped up on the ottoman as he flipped lazily through a Muggle newspaper. Fleur sat just a few inches away, curled into the other chair, reading Racine.

The wireless was playing—the first broadcast of Potterwatch, featuring the twins, Lee Jordan, and Kingsley had just ended and now a Celestina Warbeck song warbled through the speaker.

Fleur's lips twitched as she read—she glanced over at him, and he grinned at her. She rolled her eyes.

Tonks snickered from across the room—she had been quiet for most of the evening, but now she smirked, arms crossed over her only-just-noticeably pregnant belly. She sat on the floor, working a jigsaw puzzle of dragons that Charlie had sent months ago, leaning back against her husband's legs.

Fleur snorted loudly, then blushed, hiding behind her book when Tonks started lip-synching the lyrics dramatically, putting a hand to her chest and closing her eyes. Her hair turned into a black bouffant and she batted her lashes, looking oddly like the Singing Sorceress. Bill sputtered into his tea and Fleur giggled again.

Remus looked at her over his own book, raising an eyebrow. "What are you all on about?"

"A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love," Tonks managed, quickly resuming her typical appearance and laughing into her mug of cider. The song picked up, progressing into the banshee and harpsichord solo. Fleur jumped from her seat, dancing across the room, and pulled Tonks to her feet. They linked arms and whirled in circles, shaking their hips and throwing in the occasional disco move, scattering puzzle pieces across the floor.

Remus regarded his wife with mock-mortification. "Dear Merlin, must we?"

Both women rolled their eyes at him synchronously, and started singing the words in earnest—neither of them were very good at all.

"That's it!" Bill rolled up his newspaper and playfully swatted at the back of Fleur's legs with it. "I'm changing the station!"

"Aww, come on!"

"Oh, Beel, we're only having fun!"

He tapped the wireless with his wand and it switched to a classic rock song—picked up from the local Muggle radio station.

"Oh, I know this one! _I put a spell on you,"_ Bill crooned into the rolled-up newspaper like it was microphone, gesturing grandly. _"Because you're miiiiiine!"_

_"You'd better stop the things that you do,"_ Remus joined in from behind his book, singing hoarsely. _"I said watch out, I ain't lyin'!"_

The girls burst into laughter again and Fleur dropped onto the sofa, shaking her beautiful blonde hair out of her face. Tonks spilled her cider on the rug, frantically trying to clean it up while cackling madly, and made it worse, spreading the spill. Fleur's cleaning spell missed and the fringe of the rug start to smolder. Remus was laughing with his hands over his face, shoulders shaking.

"Oh, god, I'm sorry, Bill...you can come live with us if Nymphadora burns your house down."

"Oh, bollocks…" Tonks started to cry, tears streaming down her cheeks though she still shrieked with giggles, attempting to stomp out the smoke. "Shut your face, Lupin, I'll have you know that I've never burned anything down that wasn't on purpose!"

In all honesty, Bill hadn't truly felt at home in Shell Cottage until that moment, with his adopted family, laughing like mad and catching the carpet on fire. It was a Weasley moment.

He couldn't imagine being from such a small clan, like Tonks, who only had her mum for now, since her father had gone into hiding, being Muggleborn. He definitely couldn't imagine being completely alone in the world like Remus once was, having lost all the people he cared about one by one. Both of them smiled, and were genuinely happy—Bill knew for a fact it was the kind of happiness that only comes from being part of a family like his own, and that even in the middle of a war a family could find something to laugh about. If everyone knew what that felt like, then there probably wouldn't be war at all.

A sudden knock on the door brought an immediate stop to the levity, and drawing his wand, the eldest Weasley slowly opened the door. Ron was standing on the front step, soaked to the skin, red-eyed and shivering.

Bill was shocked by his sudden appearance, and forgetting security procedures, grabbed him by the shoulders. No potion in the world could have imitated his expression, it was the same look of fear he'd seen only once on the boy's face, during the last task of Triwizard Cup. Fleur gasped, and both Tonks and Remus drew their wands and were at the door before he could stop them.

"Bill--" he started, looking over his brother's shoulder at the ex-Auror and former Professor. "It's me, I promise--"

"No, everyone—it's alright, it's Ron, I know…" Bill pulled him in the house, holding him steady. "What happened?"

"Everything's f-fine…we're all okay, I—" his youngest brother looked down, fighting tears and gasping for breath. His Weasley-red hair was dark with rain, drippin down his nose. "I just c-can't go it anymore."

"That's…that's okay, Ron." He wrapped him in a hug--the boy was skin and bones, and looking for all the world as if he'd just murdered someone. "Fleur, get a blanket, please. It's okay, man, calm down and tell me what happened."

"No, I've let them down! Harry and 'Mione..." He shivered uncontrollably as he wiped his face on the sleeve of his soggy maroon jumper. "I couldn't find them after I left...it's so fuckin' cold out there..."

"Hey, it's alright, Ron. Everything's going to be okay."

---

Molly had never told her children that she had been Captain of the Dueling Club at Hogwarts, during her school years. Girls had only just been allowed to join--it was where she had met Arthur, and had quite literally knocked him off his feet with a Body-Bind Curse the first night of practice.

They had been together ever since, building their tiny empire, king and queen of a family who made up, in spirit and kindness and honesty, what they lacked in gold, jewels, and fancy names.

She sat in her favorite chair, knitting furiously without magic. Little Teddy Lupin would need socks for when autumn rolled around again, and so she had a ball of soft, thin, defiantly turquoise yarn on the floor, working it into a tiny stocking with the four sharp needles in her hands. The thread ravelled out quickly, much like her life had, daring to be cut by abhorred shears.

Her husband sat in the chair opposite her, staring into his tea as if waiting for a sign. His newspaper was folded across his knee--he hadn't read it. It was all obituaries.

She added a stripe of pink and gray to the sock, as an afterthought.

Molly Weasley had never told her children many things. She never told Bill that his long hair made him look exceptionally handsome, all propriety aside. Charlie still didn't know that she had forgiven him for that first tattoo at seventeen. She never told Percy that as proud of him as she was, she thought he took life much too seriously for such a young man.

She had certainly never told the twins that they were an accident, albeit the best accident she had ever had, nor had she informed them as to why she hadn't named them after their uncles properly. She had been too afraid that she would lose them, as well.

They had learned that from a stranger, and she regretted it.

Molly dropped her knitting onto the arm of the chair and went to the door into the next room, opening it just far enough to see in. All of her children, save one, were in the room.

Bill and Percy sat facing each other at the table, the chessboard between them long abandoned. The older brother grasped the younger's hand, both talking in low voices. Percy took off his glasses and wiped his eyes.

Ginny sat in Charlie's lap, still wearing the black dress she hated so much, and had worn so often in the past week. She had fallen asleep crying into Charlie's shoulder. He stared out the window, smoothing her hair, the very image of stoicism, though she knew he had gone out drinking with Bill and Percy the night before. Molly wouldn't deny them that right, they were men, after all, and it was how men coped.

Harry, Ron and Hermione were all fast asleep on the sofa--out so soundly it took all but a marching band to wake them, and had been asleep more than awake for days on end. She woke them for mealtimes and funerals.

George sat on the floor near the wireless, his arms around his knees, eyes closed and absently mouthing the lyrics to the Weird Sisters song playing almost inaudibly in the background. The night after the war ended, he had gone to the shop, got every firecracker in the building and handed them out free of charge in the streets of Diagon Alley, and he hadn't gone back since.

It had taken an incredible amount of courage for George to do even that, and she was as proud of him as she ever could have been.

She breathed a sigh of pained, guilty relief and walked out to the front steps, Vanishing the flowers from the door. From the pocket of her apron, she pulled a scarf she had finished only hours before. In her haste she had knitted a yellow F onto bright blue wool, instead of G.

The fringe fluttered on the wind as she made her way down to the orchard, where the children usually played Quidditch. A low white tombstone marked the spot, bearing her son's name. Grass and flowers had already overtaken the bare dirt, with the help of magic. It made it seem more surreal, but somehow more acceptable.

Their family had made it through by a thread, by the invisible bond that held them together--it kept them from giving up.

She picked a rock up from nearby and neatly folded the scarf, placing the stone atop it to weight it down. She pulled a strand of yarn from the fringe and worked it through her plain brown shawl, tying the ends.

* * *

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